


Not So Different

by silvernote17



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/M, didn't ship it and now I doooooooooooooooooooo; so much dancing; so much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 14:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21459898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvernote17/pseuds/silvernote17
Summary: Goodness, I really didn't think I'd fall so hard for these two. Seriously. Just too much.Also, it is good to nibble at a bite of a thought rather poke around a half-decent one-shot (or another chapter in a novel no one asked for with a pairing no one ships). There are chapters yet to be posted in the latter, nothing to follow the former, but it is certainly a fandom I've enjoyed so far.So angsty, such dramatics. Poor little fluffs.
Relationships: Oscar Pine/Ruby Rose
Comments: 3
Kudos: 69





	Not So Different

**Author's Note:**

> Goodness, I really didn't think I'd fall so hard for these two. Seriously. Just too much.
> 
> Also, it is good to nibble at a bite of a thought rather poke around a half-decent one-shot (or another chapter in a novel no one asked for with a pairing no one ships). There are chapters yet to be posted in the latter, nothing to follow the former, but it is certainly a fandom I've enjoyed so far. 
> 
> So angsty, such dramatics. Poor little fluffs.

_“If you think about it, dancing and fighting aren’t so different…”_

\---

Periwinkle specks glimmered in the glass orbs floating among the ceiling cornices, drifting on Dust currents to gather and scatter, mirroring the dancers below them. The pale blue lights did little to illuminate the grand ballroom, instead catching in veins of opal within the onyx pillars and gleaming in the jewels of the attendees spinning around the room. It was a pleasant touch, a decorative feature lost on all but one attendee as she scuffed her heels against the stone floors.

Atlas Academy: military fortress, bastion of education, the crownpiece of Atlas proper… and host to what Ruby Rose saw as a needless waste of time.

It was supposed to be an evening of tentative truce between military and populace, a political gambit to ease the fears inherent in an election cycle, but the scene was too contrived. The dinner spread was too rich, the liquor too strong, and the whole thing reeked of Schnee-like opulence. Of course, the guest list was intended as a handshake between Ironwood’s leaders and those of the public: mayors, governors, heads of state and heads of business, the influence upon the civilians rather than the civilians themselves.

Ruby sat miserably in her formal dress, a bold streak of red against the icy hues of the Academy stone and pristine white of crisp Atlasian uniforms, and continued to scrape her heels against the floor’s granite inlays in a lazy back-and-forth. She had been pressed into attending and seriously considered causing a diplomatic incident if only to end the whole evening right then.

\---

“When reelected, I can allot the resources to rebuild Beacon, to ensure people can return to their homes in Vale once my military overtake the Grimm,” Ironwood said as Ruby and her team gathered after the latest attempt to secure an abandoned, monster-ridden Dust mine under Ironwood’s orders. “We can’t allow Atlas to forget our responsibilities outside the kingdom. You were there, all of you, and can provide the credibility investors need-“

“I hardly think Atlas is ready to listen to the truth,” Weiss said, shaking her head as she sheathed Myrtenaster and crossed her arms against the General’s attention. “You know how these people are.”

“These people are our people,” he replied with more than a hint of patience in his voice. “If I recall, you had choice words to say last time you encountered their ignorance – I’d prefer if you made less of a scene this time. I may not be available to intervene.”

Weiss had the good sense not to blush but gave no response to the General, glancing over his shoulder instead at her sister waiting for them at the edge of the valley with their transportation back to Atlas Academy. The wind whipped at them, a bitterness lifting off the snow to sink into Ruby’s spirit as much as the impending blizzard cut through her cloak. Blake and Yang huffed behind her, as exhausted as Nora and Ren but less willing to show it. Nora draped across her partner in a tired stupor, Ren and Jaune refusing to show the AceOps just how out of shape they were in comparison to Ironwood’s personal retinue. Ruby shivered, catching the attention of her friends, and Weiss silently led the way past to Winter’s ship, everyone but the dark-haired huntress following. Uncertain, not wanting to insult the General, she made an attempt.

“I’m sure, I mean… I think we need to tell people what happened, but… uh,” she tried, more and more chilled with every passing second. The cold was so distracting, stealing the warmth from her limbs and the words from her mouth, and she had a sudden renewed appreciation for the sleeves on her old huntress costume (undoubtedly lost to some incinerator by now).

The General overcame her stammering, insisting the Fall of Beacon Academy was a tale needing telling as they came along as the last in line to board the airship.

“You were there,” he repeated, firm in his insistence. “You were there and all of you have the responsibility to fight for Vale as you once did for Beacon itself.”

With his soldiers following, the General left them in the belly of the transport, Jaune slumping the moment the AceOps were out of view. Weiss hesitantly left Ruby, giving her a comforting pat on the arm before joining Winter where her elder sister waited for her.

“It’ll be okay,” she said quickly, trying and failing to soothe Ruby’s growing annoyance with any and all things Atlasian. “James Ironwood has always done the right thing, even when we didn’t think it was right to begin with.”

As Weiss disappeared into the pilot’s cabin with Winter and the ship’s engines hummed in ascent, Ruby kicked a Dust crate emptied by the now finished assignment. At the very least, the General would expect them to make an appearance at whatever event this ended up being, meaning a wasted evening at best and dancing at worst.

“How bad could it be?” she rallied to her team, shivering all the while. They didn’t believe her any more than she believed herself.

\---

“This is the worst, Ruby.”

In her sulking, the huntress hadn’t seen Yang and Nora approach, the Valkyrie herself looking as cranky as Ruby felt. Nora tugged at her sleeves, uncomfortable, muttering threats to rip off the dainty fabric if it didn’t stop creeping up her arms to puddle around her elbows. Yang was just as frustrated, her eyes a dull red as she threatened to explode in rage at any moment; her hair smoldered her dress and the faint smell of scorched fabric wafted on the scents of chocolate and expensive perfume.

Blake and Weiss had not attended, the latter hiding from her very-important-guest father and the former refusing to stand in the same room as those who willingly profited from the continued slavery and abuse of her people. Ren was doing his best to accompany Jaune, the two young men sharing an abbreviated series of events the night Beacon Tower fell to whomever would listen, but Jaune’s face betrayed his memory of their teammate dying in that very tower. The longer he talked, the quieter he became, until Ren ultimately pulled him away from the prying ears and entertainment-seeking attendees who didn’t notice the pallor on the boy’s face. It was a series of torturous events for the teams, each attendee seeming both grotesquely intrigued and bored by the Beacon students advocating for awareness of foreign aid. Ultimately, that was what this was: an attempt to pull apart the shell protecting these attendees from the horrors other kingdoms faced, and continue to face, but under the distraction of an increasingly raucous party and against the ignorance of the arrogant. What six young hunters and huntresses could do against the stupidly opulent and purposefully naïve resulted in a paltry series of shoulder pats and muttered condolences. It was enough to make anyone furious and Yang had done an admirable job not punching anyone straight in their face.

“I don’t know what Ironwood was thinking,” Yang sneered, glancing around them. “With all the metal in his head, you’d think there was a brain rattling around in there. But no, we need to put our dead friends up for conversation with the worst of the worst.”

“Ironwood was there, though, for the Fall of Beacon,” Nora mentioned, starting to rip one of the seams along her shoulder in an attempt to pull a gauzy sleeve from her dress. “He helped us fight.”

“He didn’t make us stay and fight, though,” Yang muttered, glowering as a loud woman passed too close behind her. A cry of alarm and a flash of heat warned Ruby that there would soon be a fire on their hands if Yang hit the limit of her own tolerance. “He’s trapped us here to fight this battle for him. These people don’t even want him anymore. Why would we need to get him elected again when he apparently did such a bad job of it the first time around?”

With Nora half de-sleeved and Yang continuing to lose the battle to keep the peace, Ruby got to her feet. It was in an ungainly and less than graceful manner as she realized she was in heels, those stupid lady stilts she vowed to always hate forever and ever, and she was half-tempted to kick them off into the crowd of well-dressed, high-breed, social-climbing idiots that made her and everyone she loved feel so worthless.

“Go get Jaune,” she said, concerned as she saw what was likely the silhouette of her friend draped over a far table and clutching a wine bucket. The faint sounds of retching caught their attention and Ren, through a break in the crowd, beckoned someone to come help him carry an overwhelmed, overly emotional, and likely inebriated Jaune away from the party. The noise level increased again and Yang stalked off amid sounds of laughter, Ruby hoping for everyone’s sake that no one was jeering Jaune’s sickness.

“At least Oscar is doing a good job,” Nora said, triumphantly destroying her sleeves and looking very much as though vermin had had a go at the fabric. “Ironwood turned him into his own little diplomat.”

“He’s probably doing better than all of us combined,” Ruby agreed, distracted by watching for Yang to truly leave the room with Jaune and Ren in tow.

“It’s easier when you aren’t sitting all night,” came a voice over her shoulder and Ruby startled to turn to see Oscar standing next to them, mirth in his voice and a smile on his face. Nora rolled her eyes at him and stalked off, leaving her rags behind.

Nora was one of the many who was suspicious of Oscar, no longer an adorable little boy but a stranger with a strange secret. The smile dropped and Ruby watched Oscar recompose himself; it was a flash of sadness hidden well but Ruby knew Oscar better than any of them. She was the only one who had tried to get to know him for him, one of the few who acknowledged him when he entered a room, who saw him as Oscar and not only as the incarnation of an untrustworthy immortal.

“So…”

He tried to get Ruby to say anything at all as the huntress stood there silently, shaking her head as she watched people sway around the room to the sounds of a string ensemble. The musicians, tucked away in a corner, seemed bored and Ruby noted that anything could be playing in the background and no one would give them a second thought – even though it was a lovely performance, the rancorous chatter seemed to grow louder and louder until Ruby could hardly hear the musicians at all.

“Do you want some punch?”

She didn’t hear him as she looked for any sign of familiarity around the room. Now that her team was absent, the only faces that could be considered even remotely friendly were Winter Schnee, dressed in her high-necked and brilliantly white military dress, and General Ironwood himself. Ever the gentleman, Ruby watched the General accept the hand of an attendee seeking a dance and, against a faint rhythm of the string ensemble, Ruby watched them move through the crowd as they had what looked like a very serious conversation. Likely a sponsor of his campaign, she thought, imagining their conversation as an ugly demonstration of numbers and plotting while they so absentmindedly went through the motions of a dance she didn’t know.

“Do you want to leave?”

She worried about Weiss, worried about Blake, worried about Jaune and the grief she saw as he was escorted away by their friends. Ruby was thankful he wasn’t there, hadn’t actually watched their classmate burn away in a drift of cinders, hadn’t experienced the searing horror of that arrow stuck in Pyrrha’s heart. It was disgusting, this display of causal interest in the recovery of a city still run under by Grimm, and Ruby felt her stomach churn knowing she had sat all night in self-pity for having to wear a formal dress. She should have jumped on the first transport out of Atlas and made her way to the ruins of Beacon Academy; if she left now, she could be reaping Grimm in Vale by dawn.

A hand grabbed her own and the huntress spun toward the ground in a heap of flailing limbs and lost balance; as she felt the closeness of the cold granite floor, Ruby was pulled back into a less than graceful dip by a very embarrassed Oscar.

“I thought I could do that a little better than I actually did,” he stammered, bright red but holding tight to her hand as an arm did its own little uncertain dance between Ruby’s arm and waist. “Sorry, but you seemed so sad.”

“And dancing is going to make me happy?”

Ruby caught her rude exclaim but not before finishing it, biting back her own embarrassment at not knowing how to do anything more than snap at the only friend she had in this room.

“I thought it would at least distract you,” Oscar admitted, both of them standing completely still as others came near to jostling them in their own spins and swirls. “You didn’t seem to hear a word I said.”

Shaking her head, Ruby was too afraid of falling down to do more than stand in front of Oscar with her hands clenched to brace her weight where he held her.

“We can just stand and sway,” he offered, his face still a furious blush, and Ruby was so distracted by the way his freckles disappeared into the red of his heated skin that she found herself ready to laugh instead of cry.

“Okay, I think.”

They stood silently, both feeling absolutely ridiculous for not moving their feet but swaying back and forth regardless, and Ruby tried her hardest to banish the terrible thoughts from her head. She focused on the Atlasian blue of the borrowed military coat Oscar wore for the occasion, saw how ridiculous it looked on him; it was a contrived outfit, meant to blend him into the populace, to make him one of them, to make him familiar to those who were only familiar with themselves. It clashed with his hazel eyes, did his complexion no favors, and made him seem shorter than he actually was – but even wearing this silly dress uniform, Oscar had done more for Ironwood’s request than the entire Beacon team had.

“When Ironwood said you were all coming, I knew I couldn’t refuse,” Oscar admitted, trying to strike up conversation. “When he said you were going to help him spread the word of helping Vale, I thought it was a very admirable concept. In reality, though, I’m not so sure it’s much more than politics.”

“How does this help Vale?” Ruby asked, shaking her head, taking one hand off his shoulder to gesture at the guests around them. “He didn’t lie to you that we were coming but he didn’t do you any favors by tricking you into believing we were going to help him get reelected. We could be doing so much good right now and instead we’re messing around in Atlas.”

“No wonder Weiss hates it here,” Oscar agreed, taking Ruby’s hand back to place it again on his shoulder when he saw her start to lose her balance again. “You really can’t walk in those things, huh?”

Shaking her head, Ruby felt her knees wobble as Oscar suddenly dipped down to grab her ankle, startling as he slipped off one shoe, then another. He kicked them behind him and they both cringed as a very tall woman took a very rough trip over Ruby’s abandoned heels.

“There, now we can properly learn to dance,” Oscar said, the blush coming back to his face as he returned his hand to Ruby’s waist.

“I hate dancing,” she protested, standing still as he tried unsuccessfully to initiate a lead.

“I haven’t ever danced,” he said, not wanting to look at her for embarrassment. “I’d like to try, unless you’re really not interested.”

“You know this is going to be a mess, right?”

“And it isn’t already?”

They both burst into a fit of nervous giggles realizing this was one of the most ridiculous things they’d ever found themselves doing, dancing through the tears and frustrations set by the incompetent surrounding them. Oscar was a quick study, watching Ironwood through cracks in the crowd, and telling Ruby where she needed to put her feet in coordination with his own. The world blurred away into a haze of dazzling blue lights above them and polished stone beneath them, a distraction as simple as dancing proving to be harder than Ruby expected it to be.

“I’m never going to get this,” she laughed, holding Oscar’s hand easily and enjoying his company as he vaguely succeeded in leading them through their first consecutive series of steps mimicking the dance Ironwood stepped so easily from across the room. Their entire focus couldn’t quite bring them to what others would recognize as a dance, two shy young people managing only a few times to step on each other’s toes while the elders among them continued to spin and glide.

“You’re doing just fine,” Oscar assured, face to face with Ruby as they began the steps again from the start. “Dancing really isn’t much different than fighting, you know?”

Ruby didn’t mean to freeze, didn’t intend to jerk her hand from Oscar’s as she revolted from the memory of a similar statement years ago. Was it really years ago now? His confusion was obvious on his face, no longer red with embarrassment but bright with exertion, and Ruby tried to shake away her visceral disgust. Oscar knew, though, and tried to drop his hand from her waist. In a moment of panic, she grabbed it and placed it back at the bottom of her ribs, taking a deep breath and looking down at their feet instead of into Oscar’s hazel eyes.

“It was something he said, wasn’t it?”

His voice was barely audible over the din of the room, no longer background noise to their suddenly pleasant evening but instead an intrusive itch at the back of their skulls, and Ruby didn’t know what to say for the longest time. Instead of shuffling her feet in a semblance of a dance, she stood still and Oscar stood still with her, waiting, dreading her answer.

“Yes, it was.”

And there it was, the same wedge between them as was between him and the others, that terrible echo of a man who was hardly a man at all. Ozpin’s betrayal. Ozpin’s fury. Ozpin and his disgust and their disgust for him that drove him away to a place where not even Oscar knew he hid.

It was not something they talked about, not ever, not even at Qrow’s prompting. The others ignored Oscar for what he harbored, for what he had no choice in becoming, and their distance was his undeserved punishment. Ruby, though, had never ignored him. Had never treated him badly for what he now was. Had recognized him for who he was before they met, even after Ozpin had sorted and sifted and claimed what he wanted of Oscar’s mind, body, and spirit. When Oscar himself didn’t know what was left, after the vacuum of rushing back into seemingly sole ownership of what he vaguely recognized as his own self left him confused and disheartened, Ruby had been there. But in moments like this, when even she couldn’t ignore what he was now, Oscar hated himself the most.

Swallowing hard, he couldn’t help the tears from pricking his eyes and Oscar scuffled his feet. His feet that weren’t his feet. His hands that weren’t his hands. Not for much longer, at least, as there was no knowing when Ozpin was coming back. He shouldn’t enjoy dancing, not with Ruby, not with anyone. He wasn’t going to have this regained power over himself forever, shouldn’t remind himself how much he’d miss this when he was locked back in a corner of his own consciousness.

“I’m sorry,” they said at the same time, breathing hard and yet unable to find their way apart.

“Don’t be,” Ruby said after awhile, trying to shuffle her feet where she thought they should be in a mimicry of the steps Oscar taught her. “I should be the one to apologize. I’m sorry. He isn’t you and you aren’t him. Don’t worry about it.”

“But we are,” Oscar sighed, shaking his head. “He’s not gone forever. He’s here somewhere and I think he’s waiting, biding time. I don’t know how much longer I have without him.”

“Then… then we should dance,” she said, gaining certainty as she felt the anger and fear muddle inside her. “I wanted to fight everyone tonight, wanted to take a ship to Vale and just swing until I couldn’t cut any more Grimm away from what was left, and then come back and fight everyone in this room. These awful, awful people. They hurt everyone who isn’t them. They just-“

“It isn’t them,” Oscar interrupted, letting Ruby lead as they finally started to sway again. “It isn’t them. It’s the world, Ruby. Remnant is broken and we’re going to fix it but we have to forgive these people. They’re a product of this brokenness. It isn’t them.”

“How can you say that?” she asked quietly, Oscar hardly hearing her above the nearly impossible noise of the room. They couldn’t even hear a note of the music, weren’t sure if the musicians were even playing anymore, but they kept dancing in the shy and quiet way they learned together. Two partners, interlocked, one with a slightly swollen foot but both with swollen eyes. 

“Because I have to believe it."


End file.
